Quick questions for Quicken experts!

Factual Questions
1

I have just returned to Quicken – bought and installed two copies of Quicken for home use.

Question the first: my Windows ME machine installation worked fine. Trying to install it on Windows XP, however… the instructions warned that you must be an administrator to install the product. What they don’t say is you must either be an an administrator to run it, or must be a member of a group that has full control access to the PROGRAM FILES\QUICKENW directory. This is contrary to the MS security model, isn’t it? Doesn’t Microsoft want user settings/writing/etc to go to DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS*username*? Anybody have any insight on (a) if this is true, and (b) workarounds that stop short of granting user write access to the program directory? (Lest it sound strange… I lock down these things at home in an effort to prevent virus’ nasty ways).

Question the second: how smart is Quicken in recognizing duplicate entries? I can download a .QIF or a .QFX transaction file from my bank. But some of the transactions are already manually keyed in. Am I going to end up with two entries for the check we wrote to Babies R Us?

Any and all information most graciously appreciated!

  • Rick
2

Hmmm… you could try moving your “Quicken Data File” (your register et al – everything but program preferences) to your “My Documents” folder somewhere, and then start Quicken, and open the file manually from its new location. The next time you run Quicken as that user, it ought to load your data file easily.

Quicken isn’t very good in MY case at recognizing duplicate entries, but the truth is I write maybe a single check a year, and everything else is done electronically. Once in a while, my Bank will transfer me duplicate transactions for specific days, and Quicken will simply accept them. If you’re worried about checks, that shouldn’t be such a big deal, since duplicate numbers shouldn’t happen. With electronic transactions, you’d have to ask yourself, “gee, did I really go to that ATM twice on the same day last month?”

3

My reply got lost.

Quick version:

  1. Create a new quicken file (file-> new) in quicken and point it at documents and settings.

  2. Quicken will list all transactions and intelligently match them against existing transactions. You glance over the list to make sure it guessed right, and correct it if necessary (by saying “No, this doesn’t match an older transaction, its really a new one.” etc.) Works well.

Good luck.